Not since the Nazis have we had culprits
documenting their war crimes on such a scale

By Robert Fisk

Chopping
off someone’s head or sawing it off or slicing
it off is about gore. Blood. Pain. Grotesquerie.
Death by the blade is about shame, suffering in
an animal slaughterhouse. It’s the most
repulsive theatre, understood by the Romans, the
Tudors, the French revolutionaries, the
austerest guardians of Wahhabism. Colour it
bright red.

To be
hanged, drawn and quartered was about fear,
terror – a word liberally used in Paris
after 1789 – and obedience. It still is. The
most judicious, accurate and gruesome
description I have ever read of such
executions – those of a nervous disposition
need read no further – came from an
expatriate Irishman who chanced upon the
“judicial” beheading of three Saudis in
Jeddah in 1997.
“Standing to the left of the first prisoner,
and a little behind him, the executioner
focused upon his quarry. I watched as the
sword was drawn back with the right hand. A
one-handed back swing of a golf club came to
mind … The down-swing begins. How can he do
it from that angle? … The blade met the neck
and cut through it like…a heavy cleaver
cutting through a melon … a crisp, moist
smack. The head fell and rolled a little.
The torso slumped neatly. I see now Why they
tied wrists to feet … the brain had no time
to tell the heart to stop, and the final
beat pumped a gush of blood out of the
headless torso on to the plinth.”

Oddly, back then – in the days when
decapitation was regarded as a mundane if
unpleasant ritual in Wahhabi Saudi society –
this description, in The Irish Times
of all places, elicited not the slightest
response. No one worried about the sins of
the three poor wretches, nor the “trial”
they underwent, nor the pain they must have
endured. It was all part of a timeless
tradition. You know, these warrior chaps,
always chopping off bits of one another.
Decapitations, amputations, you name it.

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I am concerned with the direction the US is taking. I have lived in the US since 1990 and never afraid as much since the September, 2001 attack by terror plot (government, group ... don't know the fact) on New York and the pentagon. Many innocent people died that day, but, the response was the most foolish American policy ever. Civil liberty curbed, detention without trial became a norm, torture used, dissent voices shot down. Now since 2003, the US is engaging in unlawful war where bound to be losing. My voice may not count but I see no future for American kids who are going to find bankrupt country some day. The reversal policy is urgent.